1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to multimedia network, systems and methods of operation. More particularly, the invention relates to systems and methods for adaptive delivery of rich media content to a user in a network based on real time bandwidth measurement and prediction, according to available user bandwidth.
2. Description of Prior Art
In recent years, there has been a sizeable growth in the use of rich media over the World Wide Web as more and more individuals and institutions are beginning to realize the web's potential in a broad range of applications including electronic commerce, education training, news, etc. Examples of rich media include animation, audio, 3-D, panoramas, and videos. There are two apparent clusters of rich media technology. One at the low end and the other at the high end, which hampers effective deployment of some rich media in Internet based applications. The “low end” cluster comprises static images and simple non-interactive animations (typically animated GIFs) which are easy to deploy and therefore have widespread usage. The “high end” clusters comprises richer and more natural experiences with larger interactivities, such as panoramas, 3-D, streaming audio/video, and composite media (e.g., MPEG-4), but the difficulty of deployment has limited widespread usage. A novel scaleable architecture called HotMedia bridges the gap between the two clusters thereby achieving widespread web penetration. A key feature of the technology is a suitable delivery file format that can contain heterogeneous compositions of media bit streams as well as meta data that defines behavior, composition and interaction semantics. The delivery file format enables the creation of lightweight single file representation of interactive, multistage presentations resulting in multiple media type contents. At the core of HotMedia client is a smart content algorithm that infers media types from the incoming data stream and fetches the media renderer components, user-interface components and hyper-linked action components, all just in time, resulting in progressive and context driven enrichment of the user experience. Further details related to HotMedia architecture are decribed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,611,812 entitled “Framework For Progressive Hierarchical and Adaptive Delivery Rich Media Presentation and Associated Meta Data”, issued Aug. 26, 2003 (SE9-98-033), supra.
Often instances of rich media incorporate links to other presentations to expand a user experience. The process of clicking on a link in a media for transfer to the other presentation is referred to as “hot linking ” or “hyper linking” which is further described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,978 entitled “Networking Using Steganographically Embedded Data Objects” issued Nov. 24, 1998 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,012 entitled “Hyper Linking Time Based Data” issued Jan. 29, 1999. The real power of “HotMedia” is in how the experience is delivered to the user. A dynamic content delivery system to a user should take into account the user's connection speed to enhance the user experience. For example, when a user has experienced reduced bandwidth because of having heavy CPU usage, phone line noise or other web browser instances, the user could receive seamlessly adjusted web content corresponding to the reduced bandwidth. LAN users might get higher quality video clips or audio clips than T1 users, with 56K modem connection user's surfing higher quality images than 28.8K modem users. An adaptive content delivery system according to user connection speed or bandwidth should have the following design goals:
1. An adaptive content delivery framework that expands the scope of information that can be adaptively delivered.
2. A content creation phase that enables individual specification and customizability of information to be adapted to the delivery for every bandwidth sensitive content context.
3. Adaptive content delivery servers requiring neither change to the server code nor changes to content for seamless interfacing.
4. A cascading delivery structure for efficient content delivery as used in the HotMedia architecture.
5. A content delivery system which provides for adaptive delivery disablement for the content.
Prior art related to multimedia delivery systems include the following:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,619 entitled “World-Wide Web Browsing with Content Delivery Over An Idle Connection & Interstitial Content Display” by D. H. Judson, discloses a personal computer supporting a graphical user interface and an Internet browser. The computer locally stores retrieves and outputs information objects to reduce waiting time normally associated with downloaded hypertext documents having high resolution graphics. In one embodiment, a web page is displayed on the graphical user interface and has at least one link to a hypertext document, preferably located at a remote server. When the user clicks on the link, the link is activated by the browser to request downloading of the hypertext documents from the remote server to the graphical user interface. While the user waits for a reply and/or as the hypertext document is being downloaded, the browser displays a previously cached information object.
An Internet program “Speed Select” from Match Logic of Excite (http://www.matchlogic.com) makes use of a user's historical profile saved over time to predict a user's connection speed at any time, based on measurements taken at similar times of the day.
None of the prior art discloses a generalized adaptive rich media content delivery framework based on real time bandwidth measurements, prediction and dynamic content delivery at the user so that advertisers or content providers can ensure that all times users receive bandwidth-sensitive content.